


hyacinth in the wind (sweet tea and petals)

by poppytears



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bakery, Alternate Universe - Flower Shop, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - No Demigods (Percy Jackson), Alternate Universe - No Gods (Percy Jackson), Alternate Universe - Small Town, Cute, Diary/Journal, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Non-Canonical, Pining, Southern Will Solace, Summer Romance, Swearing, ive been waiting to write this for years!, solangelo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2020-05-13 08:02:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19247119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poppytears/pseuds/poppytears
Summary: under the brilliant heat of the summer sun, the town of new delphi slumbers while will solace questions his future. torn between his loyalty to his dad's flower shop and a desperate longing to leave the town behind, will exists uncertainly. in the midst of his doubt, a newcomer moves into the town suddenly and without explanation.how do you know when you've finally found the place where you belong?





	1. DAFFODIL.

**Author's Note:**

> hi readers! i don't know how many of you are still checking up on this story, but i've decided to go back and fix the plot and my old writing a little. some things are a bit different - mostly my writing's just improved since early 2019 and i have a more solid idea of where i want this to go.
> 
> i'm going to try my best to update this consistently now. my first year of uni ends this april, and i really hope i can keep writing for you! thanks so much for coming back. 
> 
> with love,  
> poppytears ♡

This is gonna be tough. I haven’t even started yet and I’m feeling kinda dumb. I mean, my life is no movie. I’m not even that great at, you know, taking words out of my head and having them written down in ways that make sense. Goddamnit. Would you look at that? It’s already getting away from me.

Well, I might as well try, so here it is. My name is Will Solace. I’m seventeen. I live in New Delphi, South Carolina, and I have no idea what I want, or where I’m going, or who I am. I guess that’s normal for anyone my age, but it really just fills you up, don’t it? Like you’re against the world, and that’s the way it’ll be forever.

I’m writing in this journal now because Dad thinks it’s good for me. I came home on the last day of school – bright and early June, the summer a blank slate – and Dad asked me how I felt about being done with eleventh grade. I said, Dad, I’m feeling like my life has no real direction. He looked at me all funny, and over dinner he said that maybe a good place to start is by sorting out my own thoughts. He gave me a journal. This one.

So now that’s what I’m doing, I guess. Sorting out my thoughts. Even though I don’t really have much to sort out, on account of me not doing too much thinking in the first place.

In any case, this is what’s been happening recently.

Remember Mrs. Sito Demeter? Yeah, she died just a couple days ago. The story is that she didn’t show up to open the bakery that morning. The police went round to her house and had to pick the lock. Apparently, she just sat down to have a nap in one of her antique armchairs and passed in her sleep. Well, isn’t that the end that everyone wants for themselves, anyways? Just falling asleep, then falling a little further?

Problem is she ain’t got family. If she does, no one knows where they are or how to contact them. And that’s just too bad, cause she was such a nice old lady. I’ve seen inside her house a couple times when I was doing some work with Dad, and it’s lovely. It’s one of those old heritage houses down on Seventh Street, where all the millionaires have their summer houses. Mrs. D told me it was called a Greek Revival and all the furniture inside it was generations old. Makes me real sad to think about it all covered up in white sheets, waiting for someone to come back for it. Who’s gonna inherit all that stuff she had in there? And – this is what I’d really like to know – what’s gonna happen to the bakery now that she isn’t around to run it?

Mike told me he heard his parents talking about a rumour they heard – something about a daughter who lives out in some fancy city and never came back to visit after leaving years ago. I don’t totally believe it, but if she’s real and she grew up here, then chances are Dad knows her. It sure would be awful if she had just up and abandoned Mrs. D in that big old house, all alone. But what can I say? I want to get out of New Delphi so badly that I ache for it. Good Lord, do I need to leave this place. I know I’m not gonna, though. What would I do outside of this stifling bubble of a town? Where would I go? And anyways, the guilt of leaving Dad and Sibyl would eat me alive. I could never stand it even if I wanted to. I’m just gonna get older and older with each passing summer, and New Delphi will be unchanging around me.

Anyways, so. Dad, right? I mean, his entire life is right here, in our flower shop and the flat above it. He knows this town like he knows the words to Moonage Daydream. He’s gonna be selling flowers out of the Hyacinth till the day he dies. Which is good for him, cause he really loves what he does, and it’s nice to know he’s happy doing his thing down there in the shop, you know? Oh, and yeah, my grandmother Sibyl named him Apollo. That makes him the only Apollo in New Delphi, if not all of South goddamn Carolina. Bizarre, huh? She must have had a thing for mythology in the seventies or something. Since I’ve gotten older, people are starting to mistake me for him – like, from across the street, or from the back, or over the phone. Happens all the time. I guess we sorta do look alike. Everyone says we could be carbon copies.

Sibyl says I’m sun-kissed. She says when I was born the day shone a little stronger. Sometimes I come upstairs to the flat and I find her crocheting in the huge wingback chair by the bay window. Her incense catches the light as the smoke spirals towards the ceiling. She likes to look at me and say things like, Will Solace, young man, you’ve got some nerve being brighter than that sun on up there! It’s so cheesy and weird, but it’s her way of saying she likes me, so I’ll take it.

Well, that’s all I can think to put down right about now. I’m heading out tomorrow with Mike and Fletcher just to go down Main and see if we can’t fuck around a little. I mean, summer’s a summer, right?


	2. WHITE LILAC.

Fletcher lives on Cypress Grove, and that’s the closest to Main Street any of us live. Mike is all the way down at Muriel Lane cause his family runs a blueberry farm. Sometimes I wonder why Mike even bothers coming so far out to New Delphi High School in the first place, even though we would have never stayed friends if he didn’t. And anyways, the only other school in our area is the Eastwood Preparatory Academy for Boys.

New Delphi High and the Eastwood boys have a sort of a rivalry going on, cause those guys pay an insane amount to go to private school and learn the same stuff as us, then they act like they’re better for it. We do athletic competitions with them and stuff like that, and I’ve never met an Eastwood boy I liked. Mike says it’s kind of gay to want to go to a school full of boys in pretty little pretentious uniforms, and all of New Delphi High says the same thing, but I don’t really know what to think about that.

It’s a small town, and Eastwood is over on the other side of New Delphi, where the richer neighbourhood is. Sometimes we see them driving around in blazers and fancy shoes and sports cars. Sure, they look kind of stupid and arrogant, but sometimes I think, well, wouldn’t it be nice? Not growing up and worrying about money with your parents? But whatever, nothing’s going to change about that, so ain’t no use sitting on it.

Anyways, so, Fletcher’s closest to Main Street. I went round to his place yesterday to meet up with him and Mike, just to go see what was happening in town. His parents work up in the city and commute there every day, so it’s usually just him in the house, which is alright by him since it means he gets to work on his album in peace. Fletcher thinks he’s a bedroom pop artist, and I mean, I guess he can play a guitar, but he’s adamant about not showing me or Mike any of the music he’s come up with. Haha, I’ll believe it when I see it, Fletch.

I texted him when I got onto his street and he told me the door was already unlocked, so I left my skateboard on his porch, let myself in and went into his kitchen. It was a great afternoon to go wander round and I was in a good mood. The sun was gloriously hot and there was a wonderful breeze out. Main Street was beckoning. I heard a door swing open somewhere on the second floor above me, and then Fletcher came hurtling down the stairs. He had headphones round his neck, some kind of lo-fi beat pulsing out of them, and no shirt on. His chest was stained with lavender and his hair was wet.

I said, “Fletcher-”

He interrupted me. “Will, you gotta help me before Mike gets here and makes fun of me for this. Please, Will, come upstairs and help me out, come on.”

I asked him, “Dude, is that hair dye?”

He looked affronted, as if I was the one to suggest that he should do frosted purple tips. “It’s the look now, Will,” he said, and glanced down at the watery lavender smears on his skin. “D’you think this is gonna stain or what?”

We went up the stairs. The entire back of his neck was a melancholy, pale lilac. I wasn’t too worried about Mike showing up just yet, cause Mike never gets to places on time. In Fletcher’s bathroom, we huddled around the hair dye kit box. The abstract syncopated rhythm from his headphones echoed, trembling, against the tiles. I could smell the dye in his hair, like the drugstore cosmetics aisle.

“I’m thinkin’ you really screwed this up,” I said. I was right. The stuff he had managed to get in his hair was already setting in. “The best we can do is to just wash it off and hope you ain’t still purple by the time school starts again.”

He was leaning forward against the counter, an inch away from the mirror, picking at his stiff purple tips. I glanced at the pale curve of his back and then looked away. “Shouldn’t of trusted a hair dye kit from the Wal-Mart, huh?”, he muttered sagely.

“Shouldn’t of trusted yourself,” I told him.

Then he said he was gonna shower for a second, and thanks Will for helping him out with his mid-life crisis, and you can eat a MoonPie if you want while you’re waiting. Oh, and just keep an eye out for Mike. I said no problem, okay, and sure.

I went down to his kitchen and found the MoonPies in his cupboard. I heard a Bluetooth speaker ping. A wavering beat floated through the house from upstairs, and the shower started up.

I sat around for a couple minutes. Then I texted Mike.

Mike’s a great guy. Sure, he can be a little hot-headed, and an asshole to the people he don’t like, but I know he’d do just about anything for Fletch and me. We’ve all been friends for so long I don’t hardly remember anymore when we first got together. We used to spend our grade school summers out in the sun on the fields of his farm. I’m sitting there in Fletcher’s kitchen reeling from the nostalgia when Mike texts me back that he’s just turned into the street on his skateboard.

I took a MoonPie and stepped outside onto the porch. It was so quiet in the undisturbed afternoon heat that I could hear Mike’s skateboard clattering down the street. I called his name.

He came into view round a box hedge a couple houses down and did a kick flip for me, then snatched up the skateboard and pounded up the porch stairs.

“Will-y,” he greeted me, and gave me a fist bump.

“You’re such a damn jock, you know that?” I told him.

He snorted. “Like you ain’t,” he said, pushing me around. “Mister track star an all that. Runnin’ round the school field doin’ laps at seven in the fuckin’ morning. Least I ain’t tryna prove my shit to the Eastwooders.”

He saw my expression and gave it up. “Ah, whatever. Get your ass inside and get Fletcher and let’s get us goin’.”

I got my ass inside. The shower wasn’t running anymore, and I could hear Fletcher banging around up there. Mike followed me in and shouted up at him to get a move-on. I gave a MoonPie to Mike and we slouched around the kitchen till Fletcher came down, drying his hair with a towel, looking considerably less purple but still stained lavender round the ears.

Eventually, finally, we got ourselves out of the house. We skateboarded down Cypress Grove, threatening to knock each other over and watching Mike do ollies and kickflips off the curbs. The sunlight streamed through the trees lining the sidewalks; nothing stirred in the heat as we rode down the street. We passed old people sleeping in the shade of their wraparound porches, sun-bleached American flags waving languidly in the breeze. Couple blocks down, we turned onto Main Street.

Main is a great place to go in the summer. It’s where all the nice little shops are, and where you can usually bet on a pretty high tourist concentration. Sometimes you get the Eastwood boys racing down the street in their dumbass convertibles and sports cars, Ray-Bans and shitty trap music blasting. But mostly they’re on vacation in places like Key Largo and getting high on Carnival cruises. You’ll have a problem avoiding the New Delphi High girls, though. They roam around in packs and they giggle if they see you. They’ll swarm you like ants if you’re not careful.

So, we’re a little more reserved on Main, just in case we have an encounter. I think we were planning on heading up to the corner store to get ice-creams or something, but we had to pass by the husk of the Pomegranate Bakery on the way there.

It’s been a husk for a while. Nothing inside anymore – the lawyers got the movers to clean all the stuff out and pack it away somewhere until they come to a decision about what to do with all of Mrs. Demeter’s things and estates. Such a damn shame. It was part of the town and part of our childhood. The place had been standing since before anyone can remember. Mrs. Demeter and the bakery were like our grandmothers.

“I’m not looking in,” Mike complained as we passed the shuttered windows. “It’s too painful.”

Fletcher agreed solemnly and they carried doggedly on forward. I hopped off my skateboard. I lingered. That’s when it happened.

There were two people in there; I saw them through the window in the door. They hadn’t turned on the lights yet and I could see dust floating around them as the light filtered through the blinds. A taller lady – she disappeared into the back room as I watched. And a guy – our age maybe? – standing in the middle of the floor, hands in his pockets, looking sullen. I watched him, quizzically. I didn’t recognize him, which means he didn’t go to New Delphi High, which means he was either an Eastwooder or a newcomer. Skinny guy. All black outfit. Raven perched in the dim sepia light of the store.

Our eyes met through the door’s window.

I stared at him like a deer in headlights. He stared at me like he was a bull and I was waving a bright red flag.

“Keep up, Will!” Mike shouted from further up the street. I tore myself away from the Pomegranate, jumped back on my skateboard with the fervor of a prison escapee, and hurtled up the street to catch up with Mike and Fletch. I could feel my face burning up. I heard the bell of the bakery door ring as the guy stepped out, and with the wind whipping in my hair, I looked back over my shoulder. He was leaning out the door, watching me race away.

I don’t know how to write this down, and I’m gonna feel so stupid when I read back on this later, but I felt something lift in my chest right then. I’m not sure I can even explain it properly. There was something waking up and flying inside me. There was a euphoria to it that I’ve never felt before. My heart was beating like crazy, and he had the most beautiful black curly hair I’ve ever seen on anyone before, and his eyes were so dark. And yeah, I know this sounds really fucking gay, but I promise it isn’t.

I thought about him for the rest of my time out with Mike and Fletcher. I came home as the sun was setting and the entire street smelled like bougainvillea and I was still thinking about him. Now it’s near midnight and it looks like if I wanna distract myself enough to fall sleep tonight, I’m gonna have to write it down and get him out of my head.

I didn’t even tell anyone that I saw those two inside the Pomegranate, but I’m sure that if I saw them, someone else will have noticed eventually, and it’ll be news by tomorrow morning. They might even be Mrs. Demeter’s family, which is a little crazy. I wonder if they’d be staying in her house. It feels wrong to think that someone might be in there without her.

This is insane. I’ve gotta find out who that guy is and get my mind clear of this shit. It makes me nervous for a reason I can’t pin down.

I hope that things turn out okay. I feel like something big in all our lives is changing.

Good night.


End file.
